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Elms
We were playing a RPG last night. I'm GMing for the first time in several decades...
It's a fantasy world but with very little magic.
Last night the local mill exploded.
The subsequent events really made me aware of the age range of my players. Three of the players didn't even consider sabotage as a possible cause. Although the youngest player was also playing the character of the greatest degree of suspicion and paranoia, his immediate hunt for footprints on the other side of the river reflected his age and general knowledge rather more than personality of his character.
The older players simply took it for granted that they were dealing with a flour explosion -- and then had to explain to David what a flour explosion was. He had never had that wonderful physics demonstration, that we all remembered, of how to blow up a custard tin.
Later on in the game, it was to hit me in a different way. We were discussing the timber necessary to repair the mill. Different parts of mill machinery use different types of timber. I was listing them off: Apple oak and elm -- and got a total blank look when I said elm. He was too young, born before Dutch elm disease destroyed millions of trees. He'd never seen an elm.
Elm disease was a disaster that could have been greatly reduced if enough people had been willing to take action. It wasn't a problem that was impossible, and I say that with all the clarity of hindsight. I know it wasn't impossible becasue Brighton did take action. Today, Brighton holds the national elm collection and still has hundreds of elm trees in the city. They maintain an active programme of ensuring infected timber is not brought into the city and that trees are inspected annually and and any infected branches are removed.
I want to visit Brighton, and not just for the pavilion.
It's a fantasy world but with very little magic.
Last night the local mill exploded.
The subsequent events really made me aware of the age range of my players. Three of the players didn't even consider sabotage as a possible cause. Although the youngest player was also playing the character of the greatest degree of suspicion and paranoia, his immediate hunt for footprints on the other side of the river reflected his age and general knowledge rather more than personality of his character.
The older players simply took it for granted that they were dealing with a flour explosion -- and then had to explain to David what a flour explosion was. He had never had that wonderful physics demonstration, that we all remembered, of how to blow up a custard tin.
Later on in the game, it was to hit me in a different way. We were discussing the timber necessary to repair the mill. Different parts of mill machinery use different types of timber. I was listing them off: Apple oak and elm -- and got a total blank look when I said elm. He was too young, born before Dutch elm disease destroyed millions of trees. He'd never seen an elm.
Elm disease was a disaster that could have been greatly reduced if enough people had been willing to take action. It wasn't a problem that was impossible, and I say that with all the clarity of hindsight. I know it wasn't impossible becasue Brighton did take action. Today, Brighton holds the national elm collection and still has hundreds of elm trees in the city. They maintain an active programme of ensuring infected timber is not brought into the city and that trees are inspected annually and and any infected branches are removed.
I want to visit Brighton, and not just for the pavilion.
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So what you're saying is the older a person is the more paranoid and suspicious they are?
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Er, no. It was the young player who assumed sabotage.
I'm saying that older players have better general knowledge, accumulated over time.
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have to admit here I had never ever heard of a flour explosion...
Maybe I've reached the other side and have started forgetting things again..
(actually more likely I never knew.. I wasn't known for my school attendance..)
I knew however that sometimes bread/flour goes off and you can then have a psychedelic experience.
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That's why old mills always had wooden cogs rather than metal ones - reduced the risk of a spark.
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Don't depend on it. There's a guy in our group, about my age, whose general knowledge - such as he has - seems to come entirely from watching QI. On one occasion I GMed last year, the party entered a town in a region plagued by religious conflict. Lining the street beyond the main gate were loads of women holding up pictures of saints, which they would thrust towards random people entering the town, and anyone who recoiled too sharply would get pounced on by waiting inquisitors. And this guy's response? "Oh, I suppose they want us to buy the paintings." At which point Duncs and I creased up in hysterics.
However, on animated childrens' TV from the 1970s, he's an expert.
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It wasn't me, I was somewhere else at the time and I've got witnesses to back me up ;-)
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I like your RPG!
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(Worse, perhaps, is what the insides get like when they've been used for a while. One firend of mine won't eat anything made from wheat because when she was a teenager she did a stint cleaning grain silos...)